Report comment

No, Mostyn held that, despite not being charged with dishonesty in relation to the creation of the false document, the solicitor ended up having to meet a case of dishonesty on that issue. That was not fair to the solicitor, because dishonesty must be (and should have been) clearly alleged in the pleadings (that is, Rule 5 statement).

That part of Mostyn's decision is right. The difficult part of the decision is that (as you say) he seems to be disagreeing with the Court of Appeal over whether a lack of integrity inevitably involves dishonesty. He regards "lack of integrity" and "dishonesty" as synonymous, while the Court of Appeal in Bolton seems to have regarded them as different (at least for sentencing purposes).